Checking Water

Our local irrigation company turned the faucet allowing us to water our lawns this past weekend. Last year saw water rationing and a lot of heated tempers as the season went by. Many farmers, orchardists and more were in the same boat as water shortages plagued most of Washington State. So here we are into another season that has once again started off early. How is the water situation shaping up. Meteorologist Brad Rippey says with one notable exception, most of the West should have average to above average water supplies this year.

RIPPEY: The Big Horn Range in Wyoming, there was fortunately a big late-March storm that did improve the situation a little bit across Wyoming but still a few of the basins there are coming up short.

He does say that the big winner was the Pacific Northwest.

RIPPEY: We are certainly in our best water supply situation for the west as a whole since the winter of 2010/11. Final numbers are not yet in for California and even though we've seen some very substantial improvement in the northern half of the state we're expecting the April 1st California reservoir number to still be somewhat below average.. Otherwise everything is looking good. Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, those seven states are very close to or above average storage for this time of year and across the northern half to two-thirds of the west there's still all that snow to add to that so we're expecting a very favorable water supply situation.

That's good news for most of the Pacific Northwest and means there should be ample supplies for irrigating crops this season as well as my lawn.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.